The Down Home Zombie Blues (40 page)

Some urge he couldn’t identify forced him to memorize what he could see of her in this chiaroscuro landscape. It was as if he wanted to capture a prebattle picture so, when it was over, he could recall her satisfaction, her joy.

But something else said that wasn’t it at all.

He couldn’t let himself think about that.
You go home the end of each shift.
It was something all rookies learned, a motto that was supposed to keep you alive through whatever came your way on the streets. Don’t focus on what can go wrong. Focus on getting home.

They would. End of this mission, he and Jorie would go home.

“Theo!” Jorie straightened abruptly, swinging the scanner toward him. The screen swirled with colors, with data. Then it screeched.

His heart jolted accordingly and his gaze locked on movement behind her.

A faint greenish glow swirled twenty-five feet down the beach from where they stood. He drew his G-1 pistol as it became less translucent. It was easily three times as large as any he’d seen before.

“C-Prime,” Jorie announced. “Hold fire.”

“Holy shit,” said David as four more green portals, smaller but solidifying quickly, suddenly popped into the air. Theo targeted the closest one and traced its edges with laser fire.

Then all hell broke loose.

Two of the smaller portals erupted, zombies slithering through them like oiled snakes going downhill. Laser fire spit from Rordan’s weapon, slashing at the remaining expanding portal. David leveled his assault rifle and hit an emerging zombie with three quick, clean shots to the eyes.

But that only blinded it. It didn’t stop it.

Zeke fired as a razor-edged arm raked too close to David’s head.

“Get its heart, under the chin!” Theo dropped to one knee for a better angle and punched out three bursts. But the zombie—damn, the thing had to be more than fifteen feet tall!—took that moment to lunge sideways toward Rordan.

Theo fired again at the creature’s jawline.
You owe me one,
he silently told Rordan as the zombie dissolved into a roiling cloud of green gas.

Rordan darted a narrow-eyed glance at Theo, as if he’d heard.

There was no time for a quick comeback or kudos. Two other zombies moved into the glare of the vehicles’ headlights, lunging toward Theo yet staying close to the C-Prime. The C-Prime was fully through the portal, huge, almost bloated-looking, the wormlike creatures on its surface writhing so frantically that they flung themselves off in spinning clumps.

Theo saw Jorie nimbly sidestep a squirming clump and—
Cristos!
—suddenly realized how close, how too goddamned close, she was to the C-Prime.

Even though he knew better than to distract her, he couldn’t help himself. Fear and possessiveness warred with practicality. He shouted her name but she didn’t turn, didn’t even glance his way. Rordan did, but only for a second. Then the Guardian commander was keeping pace with Jorie, covering her back per prearranged plan. Both moved too dangerously close to the biggest zombie he’d even seen.

The sharp, rapid crack of David’s assault rifle brought Theo back to his own problems. Four large zombies—the one he’d killed had been replaced while he was watching Jorie—advanced across the sand toward Zeke. An upper arm lashed out, lengthening as if by magic before Theo’s eyes. He fired at an arm joint as Zeke hit the sand, rolling to safety by a margin of inches.

“Extenders!” he called out to David and Zeke as he jogged toward them, his boots sinking in the soft sand. “The arms grow. Watch it!”

Another slash by a different zombie sent the tops of several medium-size palm trees flying. Theo ducked as fronds sailed past him, then straightened again, firing. He took out the zombie’s topmost eye. The zombie reared back with a keening roar. Theo fired again. The laser’s energy smashed into the creature’s white heart, and in an almost blinding green flash it disappeared.

A larger one stepped up immediately in its place, its extenders filling the gap made by its missing partner. Behind it, Theo saw two more portals form. He swore harshly in Greek. He had to function for Jorie as Tamlynne had—destroying the portals before they could become zombies. David and Zeke would just have to handle the ones that got through.

He bounded for the pavement, trying to keep clear of the zombies as he headed for the forming portals. He heard David shout out a warning, followed immediately by the harsh sound of gunfire. He dropped to his knees behind a palm tree, cursing at the pain as stones cut through his jeans. A whining sound told him a razored claw had passed inches from his head.

“Clear!” Zeke called out. Theo sprang to his feet and ran. Three portals now glowed a sickly green, and, claws or not, he had to take out at least two of them, or Jorie wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot to fire the dart.

These zombies were not like the juveniles he’d fought in the park. These were full-grown, nasty-assed pieces of shit. And they were deadly as hell.

He sited the largest portal and ringed it with laser fire from his G-1, barely waiting to see what happened before moving to the next one. That odd
fooshing
noise a suddenly collapsing portal made was the only way he knew if he’d succeeded—or not.

One down…
But the next two—
God damn it!
—weren’t so cooperative. For every one he
fooshed,
another appeared. He felt as if he were inside a giant pinball machine with the damned things popping up left and right.

Fire! Jog left. Fire! Jog right. Duck, drop, roll, because a zombie noticed him again. Sweat ran down his face in spite of the cooling night air and the breeze off the bay.

He darted another glance at Jorie. Rordan was doing a good job of keeping the zombies away from her and hitting the few portals that formed nearby, but Jorie hadn’t been able to get into position. Several times he saw her drop to one knee and prepare to fire, only to have to bolt out of the way of a clawed arm or worm-covered leg.

Seven zombies now guarded the C-Prime, with three directly in front of it. Jorie and Rordan hit them with a barrage. Zeke and David took on the other four, with David now using the Tresh laser rifle to very neatly drop two with nice shots under their chins. Theo laced two growing portals, going back and forth from one to the other, but he failed to see the third off to his left until a zombie was already halfway out of it.

He spun, fired, and missed. When he turned back, claws were reaching through the two portals in front of him.

One closed with a hard
foosh!
A glance to his left showed Zeke taking on that zombie, yellow goo flying as bullets plowed into its face. Zeke wasn’t going to eat for a week after this.

Theo peppered the remaining portal with laser fire, slicing across a zombie’s extended arm. It fell to the sand, spasming as the portal snapped closed.

A harsh shout in Rordan’s voice made him turn quickly. The spate of Alarsh words meant nothing, but they didn’t have to. David’s excellent marksmanship had eradicated all but two zombies—and one was reeling from Zeke’s fire. Jorie surged between them, heading straight for the C-Prime.

Theo’s heart stopped, but his brain and feet didn’t. He bolted toward her, watching her focus on the towering monster as it seemed to focus on her, upper extenders uncoiling with an almost sinuous grace. She was too close. In the dark, cut by swaths of light from the cars’ headlights, there was no way she’d see those upper arms bearing down on her.

The only reason he didn’t shout her name was it would have required an expenditure of energy. And he needed every ounce if he was to reach her in time.

Rordan was too far away. She must have slipped past him as she had through Theo’s grasp days ago.

She dropped to her knees a few yards from the C-Prime’s feet, then shouldered her rifle. Theo heard Rordan’s angry shouts to his left. He slowed, Glock out now, G-1 in his other hand, his gaze locked on that descending arm.

He had to let her fire first. If he fired and the zombie jerked away, her shot would go wild. And they didn’t have a second dart.

“I got your six, babe!” He shoved the G-1 into his waistband. The Glock was firmly in his right hand. “Hit ’im!”

Somewhere in the distance there was a high whine underscored by gunfire—David’s laser rifle. Zeke’s Glock. Rordan’s G-1 flashing through it all. But Theo couldn’t let his attention waver. There was the C-Prime. There was Jorie. The first threatened his world. The second was his whole world.

Nothing else mattered.

The Hazer jerked, a barely visible white-hot trail spitting upward—not at the C-Prime’s heart but at another vulnerable spot under its jaw. A miss of inches would hit the white heart, killing it and the chance to infect the herd.

Teeth clenched, Theo waited for the flare of the laser against the zombie’s charged skin. He fired the Glock at the arm, so close now he could see the worms twisting and turning. Three shots in rapid succession.

“Down!” he screamed at Jorie. “Get down!”

He lunged toward her, firing one last time as yellow goo exploded, splattering around him like pus-filled rain. He tackled her, covering her body with his as something slammed hard into his back. He tensed, waiting for the searing pain of claws ripping through his flesh, but whatever it was bounced off, leaving him gasping and groaning and very aware that he hurt like hell. But Jorie was alive.

Swearing a blue streak at him in Alarsh, but she was alive.

He glanced up. The C-Prime towered over them, seeming stunned, one arm missing, the others splaying outward slowly.

He didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t care. He pulled himself to his feet and her with him. “Go!” He took his gaze off the zombie just long enough to catch a wicked grin playing over Jorie’s lips. It was the image he’d waited for. “Did you—”

Then someone shouted, “Move, now!” Theo grabbed Jorie’s arm. They barreled back toward the vehicles, where Zeke and Rordan fought with the last zombie.

A piercing roar sounded behind them.

“It’s working,” Jorie huffed out as they ran. “The virus burns. The C-Prime feels it. It will return to the herd. Seek healing. Kill them—”

Theo saw it as she did, her voice halting abruptly. His boots dug into the sand. She raised her G-1 at the translucent milky square jutting out of the night darkness and shouted something in Alarsh.

Her words needed no translation.

The Tresh had arrived.

29

Theo dragged Jorie behind David’s pickup, then shoved another clip into his gun. The sound of Rordan’s laser filled the air. Theo edged around the front of the pickup, sighted one of the humanoid forms visible through the shimmering translucence, and fired.

No screams, no sounds of a body hitting the sand. Nothing.

Skata.

“Ass-faced demon’s whores!” Jorie, beside him, poked frantically at her scanner.

“Their shielding,” Theo guessed.

“Enhanced to counter projectile weapons.” She said something in Alarsh as Rordan scrambled to their side of the truck. From the look on Rordan’s face, Theo guessed Jorie had just delivered the bad news.
Nil weapons don’t work.

David—just off to Theo’s left and using Zeke’s Mustang for cover—let loose with three shots from his assault rifle.

“No good,” Theo called out to him. “Shields!”

“And that big one?” David shouted back.

The C-Prime hadn’t created a portal and returned to the herd, as Jorie said it would. It stood in the moonlight swaying, serrated jaws grinding. Something was wrong.

“Are the Tresh controlling the C-Prime?” Theo asked her.

She was working her scanner and talking in soft but urgent tones to Rordan. “They’re trying,” she said, after a long moment during which Theo’s nerves continued to fray down to the last strand. He did not want things to go wrong like this. He did not want to have to call for backup from Chief Brantley, who’d arrive with the media—and probably the end of Theo’s career.

“They know we did something to the C-Prime but not what—yet,” she said. “They can’t risk it returning to the herd until they know. But they also can’t terminate it—a herd that size would be insane without its C-Prime.”

Suddenly Jorie barked out a short, mirthless laugh.

“They have an additional problem. They constructed their shields strong enough to prevent any incoming fire. But they also prevent outgoing. This is a blissful recurring problem with them.”

Theo leaned around the edge of the pickup and eyed the three Tresh encased in the translucent haze. Definitely not happy. Like Jorie, they had handheld gizmos that two of them were furiously tapping. The third, armed with a rifle…

He ducked back. “Is that Prow?”

Jorie’s gaze met his. “Yes. And I’m sure he knows I’m here.”

Rordan said something, his voice low and urgent.

“My problem,” Jorie answered him. “I will handle it.”

Theo knew she meant Prow, and her answer didn’t please him any more than it pleased Rordan. For once, he and Pompous Asshole were in agreement.

Movement near Zeke’s Mustang caught Theo’s attention. David and Zeke, motioning that they were coming over to the pickup. The two vehicles were almost dovetailed at the front, but there was a gap—a potentially dangerous gap—of a few open feet. “We’ll cover you,” Theo called out.

The rush of bodies made Prow jerk his head in their direction, but nothing more. Zeke hunkered next to Theo, his brows down, his mouth tight. Theo’s cop senses went on overtime. Something was wrong—more than the obvious swaying of the C-Prime and the trio of Tresh.

Zeke shot a glance at Jorie, then back to Theo again. He patted the cell-phone case on his belt. “Suzanne text-messaged me. I…” He glanced at Jorie again. “Shit. Okay. Tammy’s missing.”

Theo saw the color drain from Jorie’s face as he felt his own heart drop. “Tammy? When?” He draped his fingers over Jorie’s wrist, trying to reassure her through his touch.
I’m here for you.

“She leaves your residence?” Jorie’s voice was strained.

“Yes—I mean, I don’t know. About a half hour ago. They were folding laundry in the den. Suzanne went to the bathroom to put the towels away. When she came back, Tammy was gone. It was only seconds, she said. Not even half a minute. The doors were all locked. But she’s not in the house, she’s not in the yard, she’s nowhere to be seen in the neighborhood. I’m…I’m sorry,” Zeke stuttered, and Zeke never stuttered. “She’s just…gone.”

“The doors were locked,” Theo repeated.

“Locked from the inside. There’s no way she could leave and lock them behind her.”

Theo knew that. That’s why he asked. That meant there was only one other way out of Zeke’s house.

“Tresh,” Rordan said, spitting out the word. “The Tresh now take Tamlynne.”

Jorie turned abruptly and glared at Prow. If looks could kill, Prow would be flattened, pulverized, and incinerated. Theo would gladly help, but he didn’t think the takedown moves he’d learned in the police academy would be sufficient.

He was, he realized with a sinking feeling, out of his league. Killing zombies was one thing. Dealing with intergalactic politics and the kidnapping of a Guardian officer was far and away another. He didn’t even know if Brantley and DHS could—

“Something’s happening.” David’s voice held an urgent note.

Jorie was already rising, Rordan behind her. Theo glanced at her scanner, even though the swirls of colors and ASCII-like letters meant nothing to him. Then he looked at the C-Prime, because Jorie was.

A green glow encircled the monster’s head, spilling over its shoulders and damaged upper-arm socket.

“It’s returning to the herd?” Finally, something going right. He hoped.

“Trying,” Jorie said, as Rordan carried on a monologue in Alarsh. “Perhaps I can help it.” Her voice held a harsh note.

“We,”
Theo said, but she was already ignoring him, tapping at her scanner. She brought her G-1 up to the unit. By the cascade of lights down the weapon’s side, Theo guessed something had transferred between the two.

She flipped her eyepiece down and her mike up. “Cover me,” she told Theo over her shoulder.

“Wait a minute, young lady,” David drawled, inching forward.

“Jorie.” Theo clamped his hand on her shoulder firmly enough to let her know he meant business. Just in case she missed the warning tone in David’s voice.

She jerked her face toward him, brows down, golden eyes narrowed, and the intensity he saw there fairly sizzled the air between them. “Petrakos,” she said. “They have Tamlynne. Now it’s my turn.”

“We work as a team—”

“My problem. My solution.”

He’d heard that before. Didn’t like it then, liked it even less now.

She shook off his hand. Then someone bumped him, moving past.

Rordan.

Jorie staggered. She regained her footing quickly. Rordan’s name was the only thing Theo understood as she shouted after the man who’d already cleared the half circle of vehicles. Then she bolted. Theo’s desperate grasp for her rewarded him with nothing but air.

Fuck!

The Tresh had Tamlynne. The only chance Jorie had of getting her back would be to force the Tresh to drop their shielding and try to kidnap Prow. A fact Rordan must have figured out seconds before Theo did.

Rordan, who wanted to play hero.

Damn him.

Theo tore after Jorie and Rordan, who were skirting the edge of the low dunes that lined the beach road. And who were arguing volubly if not understandably.

The Tresh turned, watching in their shielded space. Prow raised his weapon. He’d have to drop the shielding to fire, but that wasn’t the only thing the Tresh could do.

Three greenish circles suddenly hovered over the sand. Theo had a feeling he would run out of ammo long before the Tresh ran out of zombies to send.

Jorie laced the closest zombie portal with her laser, then shouted at Rordan. He’d stopped, dropped to one knee, scanner out. Theo was only a few feet from Jorie when the C-Prime let out an eerie screech. It lurched toward Rordan, arms lengthening as it moved.

Jorie screamed Rordan’s name, but Rordan was already racing to meet the zombie, scanner raised. A clawed arm shot out, clacking as it zeroed in on Rordan’s head. The C-Prime’s mouth opened, and, in a flash, Theo knew what had happened to Jorie’s agent whose mummified head bore the indentations of a zombie’s jaw: Guardian tech set to spur a reaction, and a Guardian agent who couldn’t move fast enough.

So did Jorie, who put on a burst of speed just as Theo almost reached her.

“No!” he shouted, but she wasn’t stopping and the arm was coming down. He heard gunfire. He didn’t know if it was David or Zeke. It didn’t matter. The zombie’s claw struck Rordan’s shoulder, sending him sprawling in the sand, the scanner spinning a few feet to his left. But a second claw was there, coming from the opposite direction.

If Theo stopped to aim and fire, he’d never reach Jorie. And she was already at Rordan’s feet.

Theo’s heart stuttered as Jorie reached up for the claw, his own cry of horror almost strangling him. Lungs burning, he lunged for her, intent on hanging on to her, no matter what. If he couldn’t pull her away and the C-Prime took them both, so be it.

Cristos!

He tripped over Rordan’s boots and grabbed her waist. She jerked up, the zombie lifting her. Her arms moved frantically, and only then did Theo realize the C-Prime didn’t have her.
She
held on to the C-Prime.

“Theo! Loop this—”

The scanner’s strap. She fumbled with the strap around one of the long bolts dotting the claw. With one arm still around her waist and his boots barely touching the sand, Theo reached past her and wrapped the strap once, twice around the bolt.

“Let go!” he bellowed at her.

“No. One more!” She hung on to the edge of the metallic arm and flipped the entire scanner over an adjoining bolt. “Now! Jump!”

She fell against him as they dropped to the sand. He dragged her to her feet. There was a third arm.

“Move!” He shoved her away.

“Rordan!” She spun, reaching for the man lying motionless behind them.

“I’ve got him. Now go!” He grabbed Rordan’s wrists. As soon as he was clear of the C-Prime’s arms, he’d throw the man over his shoulder, fireman style. But right now speed was critical.

He caught a fleeting glimpse of a grin on Jorie’s lips. “Good work,
agapi mou
!”

Her Greek accent was lousy, but his heart swelled. “Move!” he said again. He didn’t know why attaching the scanner to the C-Prime was important, but they’d done it. They were going to make it.

She darted past him as he dragged Rordan away from the zombie. Theo was aware of David shouting something. And Zeke—

“Down! Get down!” Zeke’s command was clearer.

Another spate of gunfire. Then the high-pitched whine of a laser rifle. Theo jerked toward the sound. The Tresh shielding was gone. Prow raised his rifle and fired.

“Jorie, down!” Theo screamed as he released Rordan’s wrists. He yanked his Glock from the holster and fired three shots at Prow, center mass. He pulled off two more as the Devastator lurched backward from the impact of the bullets, laser rifle sliding from his fingers.

Both Tresh on Prow’s right fell too, but Theo didn’t know if it was David or Zeke who took them out, because someone else was falling.

Jorie.

Jorie, twisting sideways, her G-1 slipping from her grasp, her eyes wide, her knees folding.

Theo bellowed out an anguished cry and raced toward her. She lay on the sand when he reached her, four neat holes puncturing her right shoulder, two more on her right side charring her skin, the edge of her uniform, and the top of her technosleeve. Her eyes were still wide, her breath coming in hard, rasping gasps.

“Th-Theo?”

Cristos. Cristos!
“Babe.” His own voice was as breathy as hers. “Don’t move. Stay still. We’ll get help.” He reached instinctively for his police radio, but it wasn’t on his hip, and for a long, agonizing moment, confusion flooded him. Then he remembered: he wasn’t a cop now. He was Theo Petrakos, who’d acted without Chief Brantley’s approval or help. Without the Bahia Vista PD as backup.

“Zeke!” Heart thudding painfully in his chest, he fumbled for the cell phone on his belt. The 911 dispatch would get an EMT unit here. There was a small fire station on the island, not far from the 7-Eleven. Three minutes, maybe five.

Jorie’s eyelids fluttered, her gaze unfocused as Zeke and David knelt beside him in the sand.

“Agapi mou.”
He took her cold fingers in his left hand, flipped open the cell phone with his right. “Stay with me,
agapi mou.
”